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August
15 |
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Today's
Quotation:
God cannot endure that unfestive, mirthless
attitude of ours in which
we eat our bread in sorrow, with pretentious, busy haste, or even
with shame. Through our daily meals He is calling us to rejoice,
to keep
holiday in the midst of our working day.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Today's
Meditation:
I've
always had an instinctive aversion to that type of religion
that calls on us to call ourselves horrible sinners who are
deserving of nothing, who are lucky to have anything
at all. No matter what you believe God to be, the idea
of a God of unlimited and unconditional love simply does not
fit with a God who wants us to hurt ourselves with our own
thoughts or actions. We've been provided with a wonderful
world in which to live, and no matter how much other people
may try to mess it up for us, the fact is that we've been
given many, many gifts. Among those gifts is the food
that we have to eat, and the many people who make their
livings by preparing that food to be eaten by us. They
make it tasty and appetizing and interesting, yet food is
one of those things that we tend to take for granted because
we're exposed to it so often-- several times per day for all
of our lives, if we're fortunate.
We
can rejoice about the food that we've been given to eat
every time we sit down to a meal if we wish to do so.
If we get into the habit of focusing on our gratitude as we
sit down, even if we do it quietly to ourselves, the meals
themselves take on much greater meaning. This is no
longer a meal, but the taking in of gifts from the planet
(fruits, vegetables, meats, liquids) in order to continue to
have the energy necessary to live. Isn't that
something to rejoice about, something to celebrate?
Celebration
doesn't have to consist of highly visible expressions of
delight-- celebrations can be a very real part of our own
inner lives, and we face a great danger if we don't practice
celebrating as we make our ways through this world. If
we become morose, unhappy, mirthless people, our lives
naturally will take on those qualities, and we'll be causing
our own lack of happiness if we don't "keep
holiday" each day of our lives.
Enjoy
your meal. Savor every bite, every morsel. Be
glad of it, and appreciate it. Recognize the miracle
that it is-- the result of tiny seeds that become plants
through the actions of soil and water and sunshine, which then are
harvested and eaten or fed to animals to provide us with
meat. Our lives will become deeper and richer the more
we celebrate all there is to celebrate, for then we come
closer to the sources of everything there is.
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Questions to ponder:
1. How many different things have to
happen for us to have a hamburger? A salad? A milkshake or a piece of cheese or a yogurt?
2. When was the last time you truly
celebrated, even to yourself,
for something as commonplace as a meal?
3. How can our lives become richer
through regular celebration? |
For further thought:
You
say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the concert
and the opera, and grace before the play and the pantomime,
and grace
before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting,
swimming,
fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace
before I dip the pen in the ink.
G. K. Chesterton |
more
thoughts and ideas on gratitude |
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